Happiness System Overhaul - suggestions?

I agree happiness is a not an event in the game.I want a living galaxy where some systems might be totally pissed and rebel.

You're definitely on the right track there Reaper. I think you'd need to come up with ideas for each society, I remember from SEIV that the evil war mongering societies got angry with treaties but happy with war, and the opposite for peaceful societies. I don't know any societies off the top of my head but I like the Industrial ideas you have, also you could add some items for the unique tech areas that would contribute to happiness. The religious one probably already has them.

I think you've got a good case to put forward.

I'll be heading home from work in a few hours, I'll have a look at the society types and see if I can come up with anything new.

I love the idea of making happiness difficult to get, so you might actually research more levels of Urban Pacification Centers. And the idea of making it not too difficult to get when it's already low, so you can end rebellions with work.

I really expected improving the planet quality to Optimal to make the people on the planet happier. I was confused when it didn't and I never figured out what that does at all... didn't seem to change the reproduction or migration rate either.

Ok I've just gone through the list of societies and here it is:

Artisans
Bezerkers
Engineers
Farmers
Industrialists
Mechanics
Merchants
Miners
Neutral
Politicians
Refiners
Schemers
Scientists
Suppliers
Traders
Warriors
Xenophobes

So there is basically a society for every area of SEV. That's what you were originally looking at wasn't it Reaper? There are too many to go through them all but some of the easy ones would be Xenophobes, Warriors, Bezerkers, they would like war. You have one for each of the resources, I'm not sure how you'd work that, maybe you would have a happiness bonus as a percentage of your production? I thought Mechanics would like to fix things but I don't think you'd really be happy if all your ships were broken. That's just a few thoughts that I've had at the moment. I hope it was vaguely worth while for you Reaper.

Have a fleet of 50 enemy ships in one of your systems and your wish will become true very quickly!

The real problem IMO is that you cannot choose the happiness type at the moment. If this bug is fixed you can create and alter happiness reactions to a great extent. At least this was my experience from SE IV.

What has struck me as really ridiculous is you can invade an enemy planet and conquer it in one turn, then on the next turn click on the population for that planet and they are jubilant. How can that possibly be? This seems totally illogical. A planet that is conquered by aliens and is 'jubilant' about it?

The effects of alien ships in your systems on happiness should be directly proportional to their mood towards you. If they feel murderous towards you, happiness should go down, but if they feel brotherly, happiness should go up (albeit at a lesser rate than if they were your own ships).

I completely agree that happiness is pretty much a redundant factor at the moment. Since this thread has got me thinking, here are some ideas (some of which overlap with suggestions above) in no particular order:

* The default happiness of average colonies should be neutral or content, rather than jubilant. Happiness-related traits and happiness facilities should actually yield a bonus to facility output, unlike as it is at the moment. As it is, building the colony happiness facilities is tantamount to wasting facility space that could be diverted to production buildings or yards / ports etc.

* Colony conditions should have a pronounced effect on happiness. At the moment, if I see a huge breathable planet - I grab it without hesitation and rarely even glance at the conditions. It will be an excellent planet, guaranteed - and even if the output is a fraction lower than normal, it's hardly worth doing anything about it. If atrocious conditions made holding onto such a colony a task to be dealt with, I believe gameplay would be improved.

* Urban Pacification centres and troops should remove unrest but probably shouldn't boost happiness beyond "content". Cracking down on troublemakers doesn't make the masses happy if they hate living on a radioactive planet! There are happiness buildings for going beyond that.

* Possibly contentious: there could perhaps be a incremental penalty to each colony's happiness as the number of colonies within an empire becomes larger and larger. This would represent the difficulty of managing an empire of such size, and would provide a "diminishing returns" mechanism for those empires racing to expand over the galaxy. To keep a huge empire in check would require troop deployments (i.e. spend resources on unit upkeep) or increasingly high tech Pacification Centres to prevent rebellion (forced diversion of some research to empire maintenance).

Balanced correctly, this last point could dissuade against the out and out "land grab" always being the best strategy for the whole course of the game. Rapid expansion would be tethered by your ability to maintain order. Spread like crazy and your empire-wide colony output will fade, and colony rebellion is ultimately threatened. Remedy with happiness related tech discoveries, which means neglecting research into big ships and lasers for a while! And again happiness traits would actually have a meaning.

In the abilities section, it will say something like "High morale on this planet gives a 20% bonus to production." Are you telling me that isn't connected to anything?

I probably should have worded that a bit better. I imagine the bonus does work, but the issue is that nearly all planets are jubilant nearly all the time, so the majority of the time everybody is getting the same bonus. I'd prefer if by default most colonies settled at lower happiness than Jubilant, so you could earn a production bonus compared to other people either by building a happiness facility or by the Naturally Happy trait.

Edit: I took a look at the happiness text files, and it's immediately apparent that 90% of the stuff I am suggesting is just plain not feasible! Unless someone out there is a mod magician, that was a whole lot of wishful thinking!!!

Actually the basic idea that rapid expansion leads to greater happiness is easy. Instead of providing anger reductions for ships and facilities built etc., you can provide anger increases. The faster you build, the faster your population will become unhappy.

The base happiness level is actually indifferent. The stock files are too lenient on happiness gains through troops, facilities, ships, etc., which is why jubliant populations are easy to come by.

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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Planet conditions increase the (maximum?) pop growth rate.

I play most of the time with the "Unhappy" racial trait. The first time I selected it in BM I forgot to check my population happiness, and after a few turns 2/3 of my colonies were rioting! (I was lucky that your Homeworld seems not to be able to rio, or maybe it has a happiness bonus?) I had to actively build troops and Urban Pacification centers in that game.